Andrzej Zarycki (b. 1941)
Theatre and Film Music
The Musical Trace of Kraków – Volume 3
Piotr Kutnik (trumpet)
Wiktoria Zawistowska, Magdalena Drozd, Jakub Zuckerman, Julia Zarycka, Adrianna Bujak-Cyran (singers)
Beata Paluch, Tadeusz Kwinta (actors)
Beethoven Academy Orchestra/Rafał Jacek Delekta
rec. 2021, Cracow, Poland
DUX 1865 [64]
Zarycki was born in Zakopane in Poland. Perhaps composers need to be multi-talented in order to survive. In any event Zarycki is an adept of orchestral, theatre, film, choral and music theatre. It’s clear enough where the focus of the current disc - one of three - rests. Dux, Delekta and his musicians open the door of the West to Zarycki’s music in these conjoined spheres. None of these little gems is much longer than five minutes, some considerably shorter. There are fifteen tracks that will be especially evocative for Poland’s home population ‘of a certain age’ and its diaspora to the West. The notes in English and Polish are the work of Magdalena Figzal-Janikowska.
The music stretches out from a sort of Richard Rodgers/Weill song-book in ‘Wstęp’. ‘Fatałaszek’ takes us to a spot of delicious innocence with a child’s voice touching in the colours surrounding a fragility of bells and pizzicato strings. There are two excerpts here. They perhaps owe something to Gorecki’s Third Symphony although not across such long tracts of music. There’s a Gallic nostalgia about ‘Aktorzy prowincjonalni’ which is a sort of gouache of sweet melancholy amid full orchestral cradling. ‘Granica’ has greater dramatic depths and perhaps a touch of sinister humour like a Charles Addams cartoon book. Anna Karenina has yielded many musical expressive pieces including those by Shchedrin and Tchaikovsky. ‘De profundis "Boże, czy mnie słyszysz?"’ includes a lightly adumbrated orchestra with two soprano voices, each in its own perspective with dark clouds inter-threaded. ‘Pieśń nad pieśniami’ (From "Punkt przecięcia") mixes spoken voice with orchestra to produce an effect equating to the Pushkin/Prokofiev Onegin masterpiece.
In ‘Com uczynił, żeś nagle pobladła?’ and ‘Między mną a tobą’ from the same film (from "Zdziczenie obyczajów pośmiertnych") the music’s warm nostalgia parallels that of the famed films of Pagnol’s childhood and adds a dash of 1960s ‘pop’ French cinema. For contrast we next hear two selections from "Hanka": a Tango with woman’s voice and Polonez which could easily have come from Khachaturian’s Masquerade. ‘Gdzie jest mój Homel?’ (from "Burzliwe życie Lejzorka Rojtszwańca") is a lugubrious ballad for male voice and a stripped-down orchestra; it seems to speak of village life. ‘Czarownice’ from Macbeth catches, with two female voices, the grand guignol aspect of Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish play’. ‘Muzyka zalotna’ (from "Zwodziciel z Sewilli", with castanets throughout and voices, serenades the listener with music like a score for a Sergiu Leone film of the 1970s.
This CD of theatre and film music was recorded for Zarycki on his eightieth birthday. The concert and the resultant CD were down to the Cracow Cultural Forum which documents for posterity musical work for the Polish stages and film world of Cracow.
Do not expect high art. No doubt you will notice this music’s sweet indebtedness to other countries’ art-forms but do not let that be an obstacle to light enjoyment of a slice of Poland’s 20th century history.
Rob Barnett
Contents
1. Zielona gęś – Wstęp | The Green Goose – Introduction
2. Piosenka Fatałaszka | Fatałaszek’s Song
3. Krajobraz rzeczy pięknych | Landscape of Beauty
4. Aktorzy prowincjonalni | Provincial Actors
5. Granica | Boundary[
6. De profundis („Boże, czy mnie słyszysz?” | ‘Lord, hear my voice!’)
7. Pieśń nad pieśniami | Song of Songs
8. Com uczynił, żeś nagle pobladła? | What Did I Do That You Suddenly Got So Pale?
9. Między mną a tobą | Between Me and You
10. Tango
11. Polonez | Polonaise
12. Gdzie jest mój Homel? | Where Is My Homel?
13. Makbet – Czarownice | Macbeth – Witches
14. Muzyka zalotna | Flirtatious music
15. Mezzo forte
